BANGING OUR HEADS AGAINST THE SECOND AMMENDMENT
(…with emotionally based rhetoric instead of common sense)

The ongoing wrangles about how to reduce gun violence in America, or to prevent future events similar to Newtown, CN, Columbine, CO, or University of Virginia, and a long list of others beyond those, as usual end up focused on the wrong end of the stick.

The recent defeat of a gun control bill in the Senate is a good example of that. Though well-intentioned, it became just another exercise in futility because it was banging our heads against the Second Amendment…with emotionally based rhetoric instead of common sense. One would think after so many years of debate about the issue, with neither the extremes of either the NRA or anti-gun advocates contributing anything useful  to come up with rational, common sense solutions to the problem, we would realize that one more piece of legislation is not the answer.

Let’s face reality folks. First of all, the Second Amendment is the Second Amendment. As it is stated it is quite clear and unequivocal in what it says….the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed… the problem with all that is that our Founders, bless their cotton-picking hearts, had no way of foreseeing the future evolution of firearm technology…from muzzle-loading muskets and pistols…to AK-47s, Glocks, Mac10s, and the like, weaponry with only one purpose…massive sustained firepower to provide maximum mayhem and slaughter. We doubt they would have written it that way if they had known about the coming of such weaponry.

All of that aside, however, since the early 1900s, various local, State, and Federal, authorities have managed to enact a variety of regulations to control the way we the people keep and bear our arms…none of which have yet to be struck down by the courts as violating that sacred Second Amendment of ours. Thus, the question is: Why all the hullaballoo about what was recently proposed in the Senate bill? The only answer that comes to mind is… because both the pro and con advocates on this issue have taken absolutely adamant positions about it…while demonizing all those who oppose those positions…rather than finding a way to reach some kind of consensus that helps resolve the problem.

It should be pointed out here that none of the perpetrators of these horrific events, had any criminal backgrounds, nor did they get the weapons they used illegally. The disturbed youth of the Newtown massacre, got his weapons from his mother’s collection, legally purchased and licensed by her. The failure in that instance was not gun-control, but failure to realize that a mentally disturbed youth could forcibly gain access to those weapons. A similar situation existed with the Columbine incident, and also with the University of Virginia one as well. In short, no existing gun control regulations played any part in preventing such incidents. Nor could they.

So the real focus on preventing such incidents should be on :                                                                       a) How to prevent mentally disturbed individuals from getting their hands on firearms, and b)How to ensure that extremely lethal high volume full-auto and semi-automatic weapons are not so readily available both to them, or anyone else with bad intentions.

There are already existing laws on the books concerning weapons such as full automatic machine guns. Instead of wrangling about the constitutionality of new legislation, why not simply amend or modify those laws that already exist? That is, specifically update the types of weapons to be covered by such laws. But if we are so emotionally agitated and torn about it all, why not just make the effort to amend…the Second Amendment?

Keep in mind that the Founders deliberately made the process difficult…but not impossible. If public opinion is so strongly in favor of tighter regulation and control of such high firepower weapons, then it shouldn’t be that difficult to get 2/3 of the House and Senate to agree to such an amendment, and 3/4 of the States to ratify it…and all in very short order besides. If that were done, whatever measures were adopted by it would be “constitutional” and no one…not even the NRA…could argue against it.

A good example of such a move was the way the proponents against the evils of alcohol managed to stampede the rest of the country to promulgate the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition). It only took them 18 months to so emotionally stir up folks, that it passed through the process in record time.(of course, fourteen years later, they realized it had all been a terrible mistake, and it was repealed by the Twenty First Amendment).

We have the same situation today with the issue of gun control. The point, however, is that by doing it that way, it is in keeping with the way our Constitution provides for such things, so by just following the Constitution…it might save us all a lot of wasted arguments and heartburn about it all.

Maalox…anyone?

CENTURION